Richard Wilcox
Activist Post
September 6, 2012
In all things of nature, there is something of the marvelous. -- Aristotle
In wildness is the preservation of the world. -- Henry David Thoreau
The earth is what we all have in common. -- Wendell Berry
We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science
and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one
understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster.
We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this
combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our
faces. -- Carl Sagan
The issue of the environment can be viewed through a fascinating variety
of historical and philosophical lenses (1; 2; 3; 4; 5). We, the “failed
species,” find ourselves on the verge of “transhumanist” transcendence,
or, on the skids toward extinction on an eroded and polluted planet (6;
7). Without a biodiverse ecology, there is no economy. Don’t try to
kill Mother Nature, she will sneeze at you, wait a few million years and
then go on to something else.
The amount of highly radioactive waste from global
nuclear power production increases every day. The monetary cost of
storing or disposing of it (probably eventually just dumping it back
into the environment when no one is looking), is skyrocketing. As yet,
there is no safe storage method that is tried and true. Although dry
cask storage is much safer than open fuel pools, it is an interim and
not long term storage solution (8).
Considering the high cost and danger of storing nuclear waste for
thousands of years, why don’t we just switch to a non-nuclear energy
economy today?
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